The Books

A Thousand Splendid Suns

Overview

The story of Mariam & Laila , the two wives of the brutal and bitter Rasheed, set against the backdrop of thirty years of tumultuous Afghan history. Mariam was only fifteen when she was sent to Kabul to marry Rasheed, thirty years her senior. Eighteen years later her failure to produce an heir leads Rasheed to take orphaned, fourteen-year-old Laila as his second wife. Laila and Mariam become allies in their battle against Rasheed and as the Taliban increase their tyrannical rule over Afghanistan, they courageously defend their family.

This is the story of the two wives of the brutal and bitter Rasheed and is set against the backdrop of thrity years of tumultuous Afghan history. Mariam was only fifteen when she was sent to Kabul to marry Rasheed, thirty years her senior. Eighteen years later her failure to produce an heir leads Rasheed to take orphaned, fourteen-year-old Laila as his second wife. Laila had already taken a lover in Tariq, and when she bears a daughter, Aziza, she knows it is only a matter of time before her violent husband discovers that Aziza is not his child.

Laila and Mariam become allies in their battle against Rasheed and find consolation in each other, forming a deep friendship. As the Taliban increase their tyrannical rule over Afghanistan, the city of Kabul suffers gunfire and bombings - the people battle starvation, brutality and fear. As the turmoil resulting from civil war worsens, Mariam and Laila courageously defend their family and through self-sacrifice, provide Aziza with security, love and a future. The book confronts the countryís volatile history, culture and the violent, repressive treatment endured by women under the Taliban.

Exceprt from A Thousand Splendid Suns

It's the whistling," Laila said to Tariq, "the damn whistling, I hate more than anything."

Tariq nodded knowingly.

It wasn't so much the whistling itself, Laila thought later, but the seconds between the start of it and impact. The brief and interminable time of feeling suspended. The not knowing. The waiting. Like a defendant about to hear the verdict.

Often it happened at dinner, when she and Babi were at the table. When it started, their heads snapped up. They listened to the whistling, forks in midair, unchewed food in their mouths. Laila saw the reflection of their half-lit faces in the pitch-black window, their shadows unmoving on the wall. The whistling. Then the blast, blissfully elsewhere, followed by an expulsion of breath and the knowledge that they had been spared for now while somewhere else, amid cries and choking clouds of smoke, there was a scrambling, a barehanded frenzy of digging, of pulling from the debris, what remained of a sister, a brother, a grandchild.

But the flip side of being spared was the agony of wondering who hadn't. After every rocket blast, Laila raced to the street, stammering a prayer, certain that, this time, surely this time, it was Tariq they would find buried beneath the rubble and smoke.

At night, Laila lay in bed and watched the sudden white flashes reflected in her window. She listened to the rattling of automatic gunfire and counted the rockets whining overhead as the house shook and flakes of plaster rained down on her from the ceiling. Some nights, when the light of rocket fire was so bright a person could read a book by it, sleep never came. And, if it did, Laila's dreams were suffused with fire and detached limbs and the moaning of the wounded.

Morning brought no relief. The muezzin's call for namaz rang out, and the Mujahideen set down their guns, faced west, and prayed. Then the rugs were folded, the guns loaded, and the mountains fired on Kabul, and Kabul fired back at the mountains, as Laila and the rest of the city watched as helpless as old Santiago watching the sharks take bites out of his prize fish.

Jennifer: Hello, Iím Jennifer Byrne and welcome to the First Tuesday Book Club. Thanks for joining us on a night when our books will take us on two remarkable and different journeys; not in that new age, finding yourself sense but real journeys, from the dust and devastation of Afghanistan, to an un-named South American nation at war with itself, and at the heart of both stories, there are tales of love, of loyalty and betrayal. Now letís meet our team; welcome back to my friends Marieke Hardy and Jason Steger. Geoffrey Cousins is one of this countryís leading businessmen, after stints as CEO of Optus and ad agency, George Patterson, he know, well he has a proper job, writing novels, his first book, The Butcher Bird was released last month, welcome Geoff.

Geoffrey Cousins: Thank you.

Jennifer: Now a great romp it is, I enjoyed The Butcher Bird, but itís a bit of a tale of dirty dealings in the business world, I wonder if there was a bit of nervousness as people thought; oh, itís me, itís him.

Jeffrey: Well itís vastly amusing to me the commentary thatís come out, who the lead characters might be, they said one was either the previous Chief Justice of NSW, Sir Lawrence Street, or if it wasnít him Ö

Jennifer: I know which one he was!

Geoffrey: Ö it was the Chairman of BHP you think; thereís a fair gap between those two! Itís a satire, theyíre people I made up, theyíre my people, they donít belong to anybody else except me.

Jennifer: Ok, now Randa Abdel-Fattah is a lawyer and the author of two young adult novels; Does My Head Look Big in This? And 10 Things I Hate About Me. Randa, those are pretty boppy titles, what were you reading as a young adult, or, as they used to call us, teenagers?

Randa: I was still reading Roald Dahl, believe it or not, I could never go past him, but I was actually in to the classics, Jane Austin.

Jennifer: How young an adult were you?

Randa: I loved Jane Austin from a young age, but then also John Steinbeck, Graham Greene and then, Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton so a fairly eclectic collection of young adult books.

Jennifer: Well welcome, itís lovely to have you tonight.

Randa: Thank you.

Jennifer: To the books, and first up, on of the yearís most keenly awaited books, not counting HP7 of course, which lives in its own entirely separate universe, but after the runaway success of his first novel; The Kite Runner, everyoneís been wondering; can Khaled Hosseini do it again, so tonight, weíre looking at his new one; A Thousand Splendid Suns.

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Jennifer: A Thousand Splendid Suns, now with The Kite Runner Jason, Hosseini look at the father/son story, looking at male relationships, this time itís women as mothers, as daughters, as friends; how well do you think he handles the switch in chromosome?

Jason: I think he does it very well actually, I have to say that I prefer this to The Kite Runner which I found to be a little bit too contrived, itís a very moving story Ė as this is Ė but I felt that there was something slightly more organic in this book but I do think that he tells a terrific story and thatís where the strength of both books lies and particularly with this one.

Jennifer: Ok, Marieke, a quick reaction for you.

Marieke: I thought it was clearly written by someone who was very close to the topic, and I think it suffered from that for me; I found it a little too heavy handed and I felt that as reader, I wasnít left enough room to make my own choices about the story and the characters; I was essentially dictated to about how I should feel about them and the situation and I think I resented that a little.

Jennifer: Alright Ė weíll come back to hear more of your resentment Marieke! Geoff, what did you think?

Geoffrey: Well I loved The Kite Runner so I was delighted to get this book; I came to it with a slight suspicion, I thought; well now perhaps this time heís going to didactic and try and force all sorts of political views through and I was making little marks in the book as I was reading it so I could be very erudite on this program and point out the places where I thought he was doing that and then suddenly there werenít any marks, I was carried away by the story

Jennifer: At what point of the story did the marks stop?

Geoffrey: Oh, not too far in, ah, I would say a couple of chapters and then no marks at all because I thought it was a very powerful story and I agree; I think heís a terrific story teller and thatís what novelists are finally.

Jennifer: I must admit, I agree with you, I thought it was a slowish start where as The Kite Runner started with a complete charge and had a slightly troublesome ending I think this one started slowly but just grew; quickly Randa, what did you think?

Randa: Well I actually it with some trepidation, I thought; oh, is this gonna be another sort of; oppressed Muslim woman, escape narrative that saturates our markets so I thought Ö

Jennifer: And this one may even actually not be pretending to be something that it isnít; it may actually be a novel!

Randa: Exactly, so it really to me, I was quite cautious when I approached it but I was pleasantly surprised and I actually think that it succeeded because he was so close to the subject so he was able to avoid the usual trappings and clichťs and really present the characters and more than more one dimensional villains; the one dimensional oppressed Muslim woman and the victims and the women and the oppressors; there was more complexity and I thought that he was able to do that.

Marieke: See I thought that one dimensional thing; the failing for me was the character of Rasheed, who I thought was incredibly one dimensionally to the point where he was quite a villain and obviously there were characteristics that were real but then I just thought; it was laid on so thick, he beat women, he was obviously a terrible husband, but then picked his toenails on the window sill and two paragraphs later heís scratching his crotch, and I thought; alright, I get it, weíre not supposed to like him, I get the point!

Geoffrey: Maybe thatís the one example of that, I wanted to Ö

Jennifer: You wanted to thump him, come on, youíre allowed to say

Geoffrey: Iím not a violent person but he was pretty horrible but there was enough reality there but he is a bit one dimensional, I agree with you.

Jason: And also, some of the other male characters you could argue Tariq might be a little bit Ö

Marieke: Might be!

Jason: Tariq is the great love of young Laila

Marieke: Yes the incredibly handsome, heís got a bit of an injury, heís got one leg.

Geoffrey: But the women are so powerfully depicted that they overwhelm that, you get lost in that and you forgive.

Jennifer: Weíre talking about the characters, and thatís great, and of course it lives and dies in the end on the characters, but I thought one of the things that worked really well about this book was, in The Kite Runner, the characters were absolutely to the fore, and it was set against Afghanistan, and even some of the time against the US, whereas here, I thought Afghanistan was one of the big characters of the novel and you really went through these 30 years of history and it drew you in to the story, it was great

Jason: He actually explains the history of Afghanistan quite deftly in the book, or at least the history since 1973 and major events in the book take place at fairly major events in the political history and he just drops in the fact that the Taliban are here. I think he does it quite well and you know that youíre going to get it and I think you actually want it because on of the things about The Kite Runner was that I thought there wasnít enough about Afghanistan, because they do go to California in it, thatís one of the things I liked about this, that you did actually get a sense of how the Afghanis were reacting to their political events that were being played out above them really.

Jennifer: Too much? Some people have complained itís a bit complex.

Geoffrey: No I think you get it and you donít see the seams. I donít like novels where the stitchingís obvious and you feel that the writer is now about to deliver to you a block of background material or something that they didnít know three weeks before and Googled and itís now being dropped into the book; well you do get a bit of that now and again and my hackles rise, to me, the mending should be invisible, if you will, and I thought this was pretty successful in that respect that, yes, thereís a lot about Afghanistan but it comes pretty naturally from the story.

Jennifer: I canít even remember all the names of them but thereís been so many books written in the last couple of years, maybe less deftly than Hosseiniís about the life of Islamic women

Randa: Beyond the veil, behind the veil, underneath the veil, transcending the veil.

Marieke: Standing next to the veil, ironing the veil.

Randa: Exactly! There is an obsession and I think that Hosseini should go one step further and go beyond what is obvious about Afghanistan and tell us for example more about Laila and the orphanage and her running the orphanage and the powerful women who really challenge the Taliban and the ordinary stereotypes.

Jennifer: Weíve been talking about content, what about form? I mean Hosseini quite regularly gets attacked, they use words like; extravagant prose or melodramatic, I personally thought it was well written, itís serviceable, good prose I think, what did you think?

Geoffrey: Oh yeah, absolutely, I donít think heís the greatest stylist in quotes that ever lived but again, to me the test of any piece of art is whether you forget about the techniques that were used to create it and you get involved in it, if itís a piece of sculpture, you want to go and grab hold of it, if itís a picture, youíre shocked by it or youíre involved with it and the same with a novel.

Jennifer: And that is one of the great bits of writing isnít it, thinking about sculpture, when they go and they visit the Bamiyan Buddhas before theyíre blown up.

Geoffrey: Absolutely.

Jason: I think the strength of this book is the story isnít it? You want to know what happens to Mariam and Laila, itís a story that carries you along. Thereís a description of Laila where quite frankly it sounds like heís describing a super-model, itís quite weird I thought but you let it go, well I did anyway.

Jennifer: Well look, it seems to none the less have carried him to the top of the best seller list so heís getting on with his prose and that is A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini; generally we really liked it.

Ok, time for book news and Les Carlyon, who we are proud to call part of our book club family since he came along to our War Stories special on Anzac Day eve, he has gone gold at the Australian Book Industry Awards; The Great War was named book of the year, to go with other prizes, Les picked up on the night and over the years, I now hold grave concerns for the load bearing capacity of Lesís mantelpiece.

Time to check in with the First Tuesday website; last month we asked you to send us your favourite food fiction, promising a signed copy of Margaret Fultonís Kitchen to the best suggestion. We had a wonderful response, that you very much, lots of support for Chocolat, by Joanne Harris, also Laura Esquivelís Like Water for Chocolate, a definite theme there, it was very tough but the prize goes to Jessica B for her mouth watering nomination of Enid Blytonís the Far Away Tree Adventures, do you remember them? They described a childís dream food, pop biscuits that you put in your mouth and you bit them and all the honey came out Ö

Jason: Oh thatís right!

Jennifer: Dew drop and honey sandwiches and strawberry plants each growing with a generous dollop of cream. Well done and congratulations Jessica. Inspired by so many great suggestions, weíre cooking up a special program for you in October devoted to food in books, from literary feasts to the birth of the recipe novel so join us for that.

I agree with all the commentators singing praises for this book. I read this book several years ago, and yet I still think of the characters and the scenes. Khaled Hosseini genius lies in his ability to convey the inhumanity of war and its devastating impact while still presenting a message of hope and love. A deeply affecting book.

Karen 19 Nov 2011 3:48:07am

This book is THE BEST BOOK I have EVER READ!!!Khaled Hosseini is so clever in his writing. This story holds one from the very beginning to the very end. Immediately after reading "A Thousand Splendid Suns" I went out and bought his first book "The Kite Runner". Another amazing work of literatary art!!! When is the next one coming out?

Caroline 01 Nov 2010 10:01:43am

Awesome book! A must read.

Gouri 25 Aug 2009 7:53:33am

Great read! I just couldn't put it down. You just grow to love every character and they follow you thoughout your day.... dont miss it!

Khaled Hosseini, the oldest of five children, was born in Kabul in 1965 to a father who was a Diplomat and a mother who taught Farsi and History at a large high school for girls. When Hosseini was a child, he read a great deal of Persian poetry as well as Persian translations of novels ranging from Aliceís Adventures in Wonderland to Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer series.

In 1970, the Afghan Foreign Ministry assigned Hosseini's father to Tehran in Iran and the family lived there until 1973. That year a coup overthrew Afghani King Zahir Shah and the country became unstable. 1976 found the Hosseini family in Paris on diplomatic assignment, and they were still living there in 1980, when Soviet troops took control of Afghanistan. Upon their return to their homeland, they found a culture or fear and violence.

In September of that year, fifteen-year-old Khaled and his family were granted political asylum in the United States and moved to San Jose, California. Arriving with nothing, the family relied on welfare and food stamps before they could support themselves financially.

Khaled completed B.A. (Biology) from Santa Clara University and attended the University of San Diego for his Medical Degree. He practiced as a GP in California for ten years. In March 2001, he started work on his first novel, The Kite Runner, rising each morning at 4am to write before starting work as as a practicing medical internist at a Los Angeles hospital. In 2003, The Kite Runner, was published becoming an international bestseller, published in 38 countries, 42 different languages and garnering much critical acclaim.

The Kite Runner is story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Amir and Hassan were raised in the same household but Amir is the son of a wealthy man, while Hassan, is the son of Amir's father's servant. A terrible event leads Amir to betray his friend. When the Soviets invade Afghanistan, Amir and his father flee the country for a new life in California. Amir thinks that he has escaped his past but he learns that the memory of Hassan and his betrayal can not be left behind.

The Kite Runner has sold eight million copies worldwide and DreamWorks (Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen) bought the film rights. The Director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland and Monster's Ball) finished shooting the film in China. The film is scheduled for a November, 2007 release through Paramount.

In 2006 Khaled Hossieni was named a goodwill envoy to UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency.

"When UNHCR asked me to work with them as a goodwill envoy, I didn't think twice. As a native of Afghanistan, a country with one of the world's largest refugee populations, the refugee issue is one that is close and dear to my heart. My role with UNHCR is to speak on behalf of the refugee cause and to serve as a public advocate for refugees around the world. It will be my privilege to try to capture public attention and to use my access to media to give voice to victims of humanitarian crises. I look forward to a long and fruitful collaboration with UNHCR." Khaled Hosseini - from his website

His new novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, went straight to Number 1 in the U.S. upon publication in May 2007. Film rights to the book were purchased by producer Scott Rudin (The Truman Show, The Royal Tenebaums, Notes on a Scandal, The Queen) and Columbia Pictures.

Khaled still lives in northern California with his wife Roya and their two children Haris and Farah, but no longer practices medicine. When Hosseini isn't writing he enjoys games of no-limits Texas hold 'em poker with his brother and friends.